Remington Court Documents Controversy

Overview

The Remington Court Documents Controversy refers to an event surrounding the gun manufacturer Remington in which the company sent the lawyers representing the families of the victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School Shooting a series of random images in response to a court discovery order requesting the company to release documentation related to their firearms marketing. The material sent included emojis and memes, notably including an image of a Minion cut like a steak captioned "Filet Minion."

Background

On July 2nd, 2021 the lawyers representing the families of the Sandy Hook victims sent the Connecticut Superior Court a motion to compel in respect to the discovery order placed on Remington. The motion detailed Remington's lack of compliance in releasing documentation related to their marketing of firearms, and claimed that Remington has "treated discovery as a game".^[1]

Developments

On July 6th, 2021 Connecticut newspaper Connecticut Post (CTPost)^[2] released a story discussing the motion to compel. CTPost also tweeted a summary of the story with an attached image of a dead Minion (shown below) with the caption, "One of the images appears to depict a minion illustrated as filet mignon -- with the caption 'filet minion.'"^[3]

The following day, the story was then shared by Twitter on its "Events" page, featuring the image mentioned by CTPost.^[4] Shortly thereafter, Twitter users began reacting to the story, specifically the "Filet Minion" image. Twitter user @AmyKono^[8] theorized that Remington had intentionally sent frivolous images in order to make the Sandy Hook families' lawyers waste time and money going through the documents in a potential effort to obscure relevant images (shown below).

Some Twitter users reacted negatively to the news, while others felt that the situation was humorous.^[5] On the negative side, Twitter user @lindyli^[6] tweeted, "Remington, the AR-15 manufacturer, sent Sandy Hook families fighting for justice 18,000 random cartoons & 15,000 pics of people go-karting & dirt-biking, and 2,000 GIFs. @RemingtonArms, are murdered kids a joke to you?!", gaining over 1,600 retweets and 4,300 likes (shown below, left). Of those who found it more humorous, Twitter user @discreetloser^[7] posted a picture of GigaChad as a way of parodying Remington's actions.

Search Interest

External References